I think the reality of it is more complex than he was incompetent, and not as good as Athelstan, Edmund, or his father Edgar the Peaceful.

By his time, there was less distinction between English/Anglo-Saxon and Norse. It was over 100 years after the Great heathen Army invaded, and a couple of decades after Erik Bloodaxe was defeated by his great uncle (King Eadred). Bloodaxe had both English and Norse supporters in Jorvik, so English and Norse had started to all be "English" and get along.

And his son, Edmund Ironside, lost the Battle of Assundun since an English earl sided with Cnut. So was it because things weren't as black and white as they were in Alfred the Great's time? Did he appear indecisive because he knew there were many traitors, and a lot more than Alfred, Athelstan, or Eadred would ever have faced when they battled the Norse?

I think the reality of it is more complex than he was incompetent, and not as good as Athelstan, Edmund, or his father Edgar the Peaceful.

By his time, there was less distinction between English/Anglo-Saxon and Norse. It was over 100 years after the Great heathen Army invaded, and a couple of decades after Erik Bloodaxe was defeated by his great uncle (King Eadred). Bloodaxe had both English and Norse supporters in Jorvik, so English and Norse had started to all be "English" and get along.

And his son, Edmund Ironside, lost the Battle of Assundun since an English earl sided with Cnut. So was it because things weren't as black and white as they were in Alfred the Great's time? Did he appear indecisive because he knew there were many traitors, and a lot more than Alfred, Athelstan, or Eadred would ever have faced when they battled the Norse?

He lost his kingdom to the Vikings. Also the name "unready" had to be a historical one right? I understand "fat" and some other titles being endearing at the time, but was being "unready" ever really a good thing?

Faced with so much treachery, he engaged in similar covert activity and betrayal of his own, which subsequently seems to have turned important people against him! Perhaps he was unlucky that his ideas and schemes never seemed to worked out. Perhaps he never managed to suss out why it was he lost support, why even his own son disobeyed him. How did he allow himself to get mixed up in two infamous murders at Oxford - two sons of Argrim, and leading thegns of the northern Danelaw ?! He doesn't seem to have been lacking in any readiness, just in a readiness to ignore possible or likely contingency - such as for example Cnut arriving back in England, with an invasion host, sooner or later!?

Sorry, this history is really not my area. Can somebody explain why aethelraed was so bad? Did he faced opposition from the church? Was he tyrannical? Was he ineffective? I read something on Wiki about him and it says he wasn't so bad, he just had a bad situation. He also produced new laws, like this one:

I can't read it and I have no idea what language or script it is in. It looks like some kind of strange Greek text.